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‘A wise man should avoid married life, as though it were a burning pit of live coals.’ Dhammika Sutta. ‘Marriage is the great mistake that wipes out the smaller stupidities of Love.’ SCHOPENHAUER.
The point of view of the Abhidhamma is certainly later than that of the Sutta Pitaka and in some ways marks an advance, for instead of professing to report the discourses of Gotama it takes the various topics on which he touched, especially psychological ethics, and treats them in a connected and systematic manner.
"If A Bikkhu should desire, O brethren, to call to mind his various temporary states in days gone by such as one birth, two births, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, or one thousand, or one hundred thousand births,-in all their modes and all their details, let him be devoted to quietude of heart, let him look through things, let him be much alone." Akankheyya Sutta.
For though Gotama had a breadth of view rare in that or in any age, though he refused to multiply observances or to dogmatize, every sutta indicates that he was a man of exceptional authority and decision; what he has laid down he has laid down; there is no compulsion or punishment, no vow of obedience or sacrificium intellectus; but it is equally clear that there is no place in the order for those who in great or small think differently from the master.
Thus in the Kevaddha sutta he relates how a monk who was puzzled by a metaphysical problem applied to various gods and finally accosted Brahmâ himself in the presence of all his retinue. After hearing the question, which was Where do the elements cease and leave no trace behind?
Since the conversation between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi occurs in almost the same form in two collections, it probably once existed as an independent piece. In Buddhist literature the composite and tertiary character of the Sutta Pitaka is equally plain. The various Nikayas are confessedly collections of discourses.
During Benjamin's visit to Egypt Sutta, in his capacity of Chief Collector of Taxes, filled nominally that office. See E.N. Adler's Jews in Many Lands, p. 28, also J.Q.R., IX, 669. The Nilometer is in a square well 16 feet in diameter, having in the centre a graduated octagonal column with Cufic inscriptions, and is 17 cubits in height, the cubit being 21-1/3 inches.
Thus nearly the whole of the long Sutta describing the Buddha's last days and death , which at first sight seems to be a connected narrative somewhat different from other Suttas, is found scattered in other parts of the Canon. Thus our oldest texts whether Brahmanic or Buddhist are editions and codifications, perhaps amplifications, of a considerably older oral teaching.
Sutta is equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sûtra, literally a thread, which signifies among the Brahmans a brief rule or aphorism but in Pali a relatively short poem or narrative dealing with a single object. This Sutta Pitaka is divided into five collections called Nikâyas. The first four are mainly in prose and contain discourses attributed to Gotama or his disciples.
From the Brahmajâla Sutta we learn that the problems which agitated ancient Magadha were such as the following: is the world eternal or not: is it infinite or finite: is there a cause for the origin of things or is it without cause: does the soul exist after death: if so, is its existence conscious or unconscious: is it eternal or does it cease to exist, not necessarily at the end of its present life but after a certain number of lives: can it enjoy perfect bliss here or elsewhere?
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